Tuesday, October 22, 2013

Hi all, just a note that ROTWORLD is one of the core games in this week's Bundle of Holding. CRYPTWORLD is one of the bonus games. If you haven't picked these up yet, or are interested in the other games, be sure to check it out!

Also, can't comment directly on this, but there are great things coming as more products in the bundle are unlocked. Why buy into the bundle?

The Bundle has:

Top-quality rulebooks, all in current editions.

A wide range of horror themes treated in terms of traditionaltabletop RPG design.

Next, I got the idea to have 8x10 cards printed with the book cover of the Pacesetter game on one side and a color version of the Action Table on the other side. These are now for sale for 1 buck each. Buy them for your whole group!

Finally, Timetricks, the TIMEMASTER supplement with additional rules for time travel and campaigns is back in print!

Saturday, September 14, 2013

Friday, September 13, 2013

On this Friday the 13th, CRYPTWORLD emerges into the world with
all the ferocity of a knife-wielding psycho killer! But instead of a
hockey mask, we've got a cover illustration by Jim Holloway!
CRYPTWORLD is the new official Pacesetter horror game. You play an investigator of
the unexplained, or even an ordinary person thrust into an unusual
situation. There are several organizations provided, which
the players can belong to, or they can be independent. Investigate,
hunt, and destroy a wide variety of things.
Whether you prefer classic monsters, psycho killers, or cryptids, we
have you covered, and so much more!

CRYPTWORLD is available in electronic format
from:Goblinoid Shop (preferred)

Sunday, September 8, 2013

Goblinoid Games presents CRYPTWORLD, the new official Pacesetter horror
RPG! Other than the zombie survival genre horror rpg ROTWORLD, there has
not been a Pacesetter horror game in print since the 1980s. CRYPTWORLD
scratches and crawls forth from the grave as the direct Pacesetter horror brand
successor!

CRYPTWORLD is a Pacesetter System horror
game in which you play an investigator of the unexplained. Any kind of
horror is possible, from hunting classic monsters to fighting the secret
manipulations of interdimensional aliens, and much more! Be an
independent hunter of the horrors in the world, or be a member of one of
the several organizations provided, each with different motivations.

CRYPTWORLD handles many subgenres of horror. It is a complete presentation of horror rules, game advice, and creatures from
different horror subgenres so that you can play any kind of horror game
you prefer. Your characters can be members of one of the several example
organizations that investigate the unexplained, rather than be limited
to only one organization. This also means that there is
no specific assumed game setting.

Coming late September!

Writing: Daniel Proctor and Tim Snider

Cover Illustration: Jim Holloway

Interior Illustrations: Jim Holloway, Brian Thomas, Tim Tyler

CRYPTWORLD and CRYPTWORLD: Chilling Adventures into the Unexplained are trademarks of Daniel Proctor.

Friday, September 6, 2013

September has come, and with it the scent of dying summer. Over the last few days (where I live) there has been a palpable chill in the air. Some of the leaves have even started to yellow. I've been looking forward to fall, because I love the season and inevitably my thoughts turn to Halloween, horror movies, and horror gaming.

I've actually been getting a head start on horror movies. For my birthday my wife bought me the two volume set of Horror Movies of the 1980s, and I've been discovering many gems I had never had a chance to see. For me, the 80s are a special time for horror movies. So many iconic films were made during that time period. A lot of crap, too, but so much fun.

There are so many great movies to watch, I'm going to have a busy September and October!

Oh, and speaking of being busy, got a painting and some b/w art in the mail from Jim Holloway yesterday:

You
are a sorcerer who can trace his ancestral roots to the Sumerian
sorcerer-priests who wielded vast power. You are an inheritor of the
magical bloodline enmeshed in a conspiracy dating from before human
civilization. Battle against enemies in the Old Game, to harness the
secrets of the mysterious Skein. You may be a member of a competing
Tower, an association or cabal of like-minded Maji, or a renegade with
your own motivations.
MAJUS is a role-playing game complete in one volume.These rules contain:

Rules for character generation

A complete magic system compatible with other Pacesetter games

Guidelines for playing campaigns in a magic noir world

Supernatural enemies

...and more!

The game uses the Pacesetter System, the same system as TIMEMASTER and SANDMAN.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

The official site for Pacesetter games is now active! The site serves as an info site and hub for the product line. Since MAJUS is coming by August, and more games are planned, it is time that the Pacesetter brand have a bigger web presence to get the word out that Pacesetter Lives!LINK

Thursday, April 18, 2013

MAJUS has reached the minimum goal to cover writing, art, production, and shipping costs. Thanks so much to all who backed the project, and for helping spread the word. Still a few days left if you want in.

I anticipate moving pretty quickly to get this project finished, and more updates to come.

Friday, March 29, 2013

Starting today all backers have access to the draft of MAJUS prior to final layout with art. This is provided as a thank you to all supporters, and so that you can get right into enjoying the game before the final version is finished. Current backers please check today's update (for backers only) with download instructions. Future backers, once pledged, can read Update 2 from the Kickstarter page to find instructions.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Goblinoid Games has launched a Kickstarter to fund art and manufacturing costs for the latest Pacesetter game!

This
time Michael Curtis, known for authoring the excellent books Stonehell,
Realms of Crawling Chaos, The Dungeon Alphabet...and more...now brings
us his magic noir game of
intrigue and battles between Maji as they compete for the legendary
Skein. MAJUS uses the classic Pacesetter System, the same system used in
TIMEMASTER and SANDMAN.

Friday, March 15, 2013

In case you haven't seen Jeff's twitter feed (Faster Monkey Games), he posted a pic of the Faster Monkey/Goblinoid booths from Gary Con. I wish I could make it this year, but hopefully next year. We combined our booths and I think they look great!

Friday, March 1, 2013

For those interested, I just want to confirm that all hard
cover copies of Labyrinth Lord and the Advanced Edition Companion that
were ordered through the Dwimmermount Kickstarter shipped today. The
PDFs were delivered several months ago. I also want to make sure people
know that James Maliszewski did in fact pay me for all of the orders. I asked him to deliver the money for
this long back, well before his personal difficulties arose, because I
wanted to ensure that I would be able to deliver the books in case
anything unforeseen happened. At the time it seemed unlikely there would
be any snags, but I was sort of looking ahead in a paranoid fashion I
guess, and we now know that snags did in fact arise. Although I have
every confidence James will eventually complete and deliver
Dwimmermount, it is now clear that Dwimmermount may not be fulfilled for some time. In light of this, I want to take care of my supporters and customers by
fulfilling this one component of the Kickstarter that I have control
over. I did take some hit due to unforeseen shipping expenses associated
with this, but I did not take an overall loss.
That's why even though some customers very generously offered to pay for
the additional shipping, I have declined those offers. As a supporter
of Dwimmermount myself I know many people already have a lot of money
invested in the project.

Thursday, February 28, 2013

Greyhawk Grognard recently wrote, "Don't Call them Clones." I disagree with some of what is said there for a couple of reasons. I've discussed the subject of how to categorize the various clones, clone-like games, and "retro feel" games a couple of times before. Since then, there have been many more games released, but I think the over-all model as a concept has held up. Here is the model, with the understanding that there are far more games out there than I can possibly fit in this space:

Neo-Retro: This is a broad category under which all relatively recent games claiming a "retro" or "old-school feel" belong. The broad classification is flexible enough to encompass games like DCC RPG and Mazes & Minotaurs, which are very different mechanically but are more about "feel."

The "Clone Spectrum" ranges from retro-clone to what I'm now calling neo-clone (formerly near-clone). These are defined below:

Retro-Clone: I originally coined this term back in 2007, and since then the waters have been muddied, but my intention was that this term be used to describe games that are designed to be system emulators, to the legal extent allowed. Any game in this category is more or less directly compatible as a system emulator.

Neo-Clone: These games are predominantly mechanically compatible with retro-clones or the source inspiration, but they add or revise certain parts to match a certain aesthetic or design goal. They still fall on the clone spectrum because of compatibility. They are not "holistically innovative" in the way that Mazes & Minotaurs is, for example, but are instead highly derived. This is where I probably differ the most with Greyhawk Grognard, because I see all motivations as basically falling in the same category, whether it is changing the economic system in ACKS, or speculating what a 2e would look like in ADD.

Games that fall in an area where these clone categories overlap are trying to emulate more closely, and include fewer rule changes or "innovations," for lack of a better term. It is a matter of degree.

This is how I see the spectrum of games out there. I don't expect the universe to agree with me, but frankly, to me, creating additional distinctions about intent is just splitting hairs. One might wish to have additional categories within the neo-retro sphere, but my scheme is set up this way because of my interests. I could envision more sphere within neo-retro, for example some that include more third edition derived categories to decide where DCC RPG and Castles & Crusades fit in their similarity or dissimilarity to third edition.

Note: Stars Without Number I'm iffy on since I have not looked at it very closely. It might be a neo-clone.

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

If you're like me, now that The Walking Dead has started up again on
television the zombie juices are flowing. In honor of the midseason
premier, ROTWORLD in electronic form is on sale for the rest of February
for only 2 dollars! Roll up some survivers and see if you can survive
the hordes of rotting dead!

Thursday, February 7, 2013

The
recent re-release of WotC Classic D&D PDFs, and in particular the release,
for the first time ever, of the Moldvay/Cook/Marsh basic game in PDF form has
prompted some people to ask what the future of the OSR and Labyrinth Lord will be.

The
unsatisfying reality is that at this stage I think any prediction of what this
will do to the OSR is only speculation. But I think the future of the OSR would
be equally nebulous even if WotC had not released its classic PDFs again. I've
always held the view that the predominant boost in popularity of the OSR was
due not to 4th edition D&D so much as the death of Gary Gygax. Much of the
blogging scene that resulted from it reflected interest in revisiting or
rediscovering the roots of D&D. So many blogger topics were related to
dissecting the old style game and style of play, an exercise (though fun) that
is most certainly not new, and neither were the majority of the insights. I
never found much of the revisionist history going on (still going on) of much
use. What was new and of tremendous
value was the large amount of creative output that could be shared with a wider
audience.

So
the time we enter into now is further removed from the sorrow many of us felt
at Gary's passing. People have revisited that youth and those old rules, and
pretty much said what they needed to say. That exercise is over. The irony is
that the OSR started as a means of preserving the old rules, but now in what
has been dubbed by some as the "second wave," that objective has been
altered to claim that the natural evolution of this process of rediscovery
should lead to new "innovations." I would argue that a lot of what
we're seeing is now that the exercise of self exploration through earlier
D&D is over for a lot of people, those who declare it is time to move on
are the same people who had moved on from earlier D&D in the past. So it
isn't the original form of the game that needs to move on, it's that the
interests of some have moved on.

The
idea of innovations is what the OSR was directly opposed to at the beginning.
Don't get me wrong, it is great for people to take D&D and make it
"theirs," even publish it, but frankly any claims that this is the
way it is supposed to be only benefit
those who feel they need to justify the existence of another house-ruled
D&D. Or put words into the mouths of dead men and claim that a new game is
constructed the way it was meant to
be. Or take something as extemporaneous as an "Appendix N" and sell
it as a manifesto rather than a
simple inspirational reading list. Those of us who helped build the foundation
of what would be the (at least commercial) aspect of the OSR where doing it as
a reaction against the edition treadmill, against viewing classic games as
outdated. Little did we know that in so doing, a new treadmill from many
sources rather than only one would spring from the seeds we planted. That people
would take our work and do the exact thing we were opposing, claim it is past
its expiration date, and here is a new improved version with fresh innovations.
But one person's innovations look like a solution begging a problem to someone
else, and what you find works for your home table is great but that doesn't
mean other people should see it as the natural new path.

In
retrospect, how could it have gone any other way? When OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord
were written, they were the canaries in the coal mine. People watched and
waited, mostly thinking we were crazy to want to publish obsolete games, but
also waiting to see if we were sued into oblivion. That didn't happen, which
emboldened others to follow in those footsteps. Except once the various
ecological niches of the OSR were filled, the only way to spread was laterally.
If you've decided to publish old-school products you have a choice to make. Do
you create supplements for a game someone else publishes, supporting their
brand, or do you release your own game? The answer lies in the moves LotFP,
Autarch, and others have made in recent years.

If
it sounds like I'm being negative about this, it is only from the perspective
that rhetoric and marketing seems to want to stomp on others to justify the
existence of the newer games. From an open gaming perspective, the various
spin-off house rule systems are all natural, certainly inevitable, and overall
healthy developments.

If
you have the vision that the original games should go on unchanged like a termite
caught in amber (e.g. many posters at the KnK Alehouse), then what has happened
recently is a bad thing. But one of the often overlooked aspects of the OSR is
that the movement is grounded not just in old-school games, but also open source
moral values. It isn't enough anymore to just have old WotC PDFs available, or
one-off print runs of AD&D. The OSR means, as Mario of Wizardawn once
cleverly put it, not just "Old School Revival," or "Old School
Renaissance," but equally as important, "Open Source Rules."

I
can envision an OSR Ecosystem where there are a variety of retro-games, some
more traditional like OSRIC and Labyrinth Lord, and others derived from those
works that add their authors' personal touches, like ACKS and ASSoH, where we
view these in their creative open-source spirit rather than getting caught up
in the competitive market-speak that wants to justify through supposed
innovation. Even though there is a commercial element, almost no one is making
an actual living at this work. At best people are supplementing a family income
from this business. That's why I think people should keep things in perspective
and ratchet down the competitiveness to properly reflect the low stakes. I
don't see ego as a valid stake.

The
future of the OSR is as much in the open source movement as it is in the
old-school movement. Something some people may have forgotten (or never knew)
is that when the OSR as we know it started in 2006, WotC had a lot of the 1e
and basic catalogs available as PDFs. It was only later in 2008 that they were
removed from sale. My point is that the presence of legal PDFs didn't prevent
the creation or perceived need for OSRIC, and likewise once the excitement dies
down I doubt it will influence the success or failure of the current commercial
side of the OSR. Having books available as PDFs is great. However, many people
would still prefer print copies. Even if reprints or a POD option happens for
B/X and other rule sets, the open source element will still be there. Labyrinth
Lord is still the best brand proxy for third party publishers who use the OGL,
and the open content from Labyrinth Lord and other retro games will continue to
give people the tools they need to create their own gaming materials.

The
OSR Ecosphere is changing, not dying. WotC has added their material back to the
ecosphere where it was in the beginning, and I think that will only strengthen
the cause for old-school gaming. People have already been converted to the idea
that the older versions of the game are just as valid as the recent ones, and
WotC's recent business decisions only reinforce that. They obviously see value
in these products now, even if they didn't seven years ago. When Labyrinth Lord
was released I suspect they didn't think much if anything about the
Moldvay/Cook/Marsh set of rules, but this time around it was among their first
releases. They "get it" now even if they didn't before, and if Labyrinth
Lord had some small part in that I consider it a success.

For additional views see Blackrazor's recent posts
here and here, and Blood of Prokopius here.

Thursday, January 24, 2013

The second printing of Starships & Spacemen 2e is now up for POD at Lulu. The second printing accounts for all known errata to date. A list of errata from the first printing is available at the Goblinoid Games forums. The PDF at RPGnow has been updated, and people who have already purchased the PDF can download the updated file for free.

Monday, January 21, 2013

I've uploaded a free adventure for Labyrinth Lord to RPGnow, called "The Gibbering Tower." It was originally provided as a free insert to customer bags from the OSR booth at Gen Con 2011. At the time I provided it to the Labyrinth Lord Society, but I now offer it to the wider public. Enjoy!